Cowaramup artist Anita Revel opens her second solo exhibition and installation Friday 3 February at the Foyer Gallery at the Margaret River Cultural Centre. The exhibition is called Colour Me Happier, and is a celebration of values and virtues expressed through colour.
Intrigued by her research into colour therapy theories and scientific studies, and how colour affects mood, Anita began exploring what values and virtues might look like if expressed in colour.
“Colour is used to express emotions in everyday language — green with envy, tickled pink, feeling blue — why not use it to represent common values and virtues?”
Using a limited palette of eight core colours, Anita found that different combinations evoke different emotional experiences.
“Reds and oranges reflect the fiery, passionate and creative aspects of our personalities, so lend themselves to such values as security, purpose, productivity and authenticity. Blues and greens tend to calm us, or make us feel connected to nature, so help us feel more in line with values such as warmth, compassion and integrity.”
The exhibition is made up of seven large-scale abstract paintings. The colours are blended to foster a positive, emotional state of being, and treated in Anita’s “prism” style of painting — highly textured work with a colourful underlay, superimposed with white stylised squares.
The hero of the exhibition, however, is a large scale abstract called Ecstatic Dance of the Cosmic Soul, which was on display at the Margaret River Chocolate Company until recently.
From afar, the piece has a lot of movement that takes the viewer on a merry dance through happy colours. Up close, though, every single square (or prism) tells a unique story within its own space.
“It reminds us that though we are but one small element in the big beautiful universe, we are uniquely intriguing in our own right,” she said. “This, to me, represents a core belief of feeling valued, and that each of us has an important place in this world.”
This principle is magnified the second part of Anita’s exhibition: a giant installation of 42 smaller abstract paintings, designed to be an interpretation of the exhibition pieces, and a further exploration of colour and emotion.
“I wanted to draw attention to each prism in the large-scale paintings, and remind the viewer to look deeper to see that no square is the same. Likewise, humans and our stories are utterly unique and beautiful to each other.”
According to Anita, when the smaller paintings are hung together as an installation, the repetition creates a sense of rhythm and movement that is both healing and stimulating at the same time.
The exhibition will be opened by Rachel Coad — winner of the 2016 Black Swan prize for portraiture — from 5-7pm on Friday 3 Feb 2017, and is sponsored by Kailis Wines. Entry is free, and prices begin at $100 per original painting.